


We're Not Kitten Around

by Anonymous



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Cat Ears, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-09-24
Packaged: 2020-10-27 06:15:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20755679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: “He speaks cat. Only I can translate it.”





	We're Not Kitten Around

**Author's Note:**

> ( For a late prompt bingo fill → language / translation )

It’s just an allergic reaction, Eddie would say, swatting, when his friends prod at the growing lumps sprouting from his head. If they touched him again, he’d commit obscene acts against their maternal guardians. It made Ritchie laugh.

What he was allergic to is anyone’s call. 

What allergic reaction could be characterized with emerging cat ears is also anyone’s call. 

But Derry is a weird town. 

Even before banding together to narrowly escape evil in the form an eldridge horror, Derry was weird. Their grocery stores had half-off days twice a week. Their arcades had game cabinets that hadn’t even been heard of in other counties. 

And their friend is growing cat ears.

After two weeks, there’s no other explanation for the fuzzy triangles standing at attention atop either side of Eddie’s skull. 

He wears a large scarf around the house — his mom would positively quarantine him if she found out — and a wool-knit cap in public. 

It’s wintertime. He can get away with it.

\- - - 

“What’s he saying now?” Bev says from the best seat of the clubhouse. 

“He’s calling you a pussy,” Ritchie says. “No, wait. He’s calling  _ himself  _ a pussy. He says he’s always been a pussy, but now it’s showing on the outside. He’d like us to respect his wishes and recognize this as his true form.”

“Ritchie, I swear to God,” Eddie says. His hat is off, leaving his second set of ears exposed.

“He’s saying that he prefers payment in the form of bellyrubs and headpats.”  


“I’ll give your sister a goddamn belly rub.”

“Now he wants me to take up a collection for his shelter fee. He has fleas, so nobody wants him. Every dollar you donate helps find this poor kitty a new home.”

“Your mother has fleas. Your goddamn  _ mother _ has fleas, Ritchie.”

“Now he’s saying, ‘Donate, won’t you? Won’t you please donate? Every little penny helps. Cough, cough. Meow.’”

Ritchie picks up a shoebox, dumps out whatever was in it — a handful of Ben’s sketching pencils, causing him to frown — and shakes it at every member of the Losers’ Club until they come up with a grand total of $2.12. It’s enough for two ice pops. Or two cans of cat food.

“Jesus Christ,” Eddie says, resigned.

“I think they’re sort of cute,” Bev says. “They make you look cute.”

“You think that’s cute?” Billy says. 

“Sure. I mean,  _ you _ don’t have cat ears. But if you did, they’d go right about…” She curls her hands into imitation ears and place them on top of Billy’s head. “Here. Totally cute.”

“You want to see something really cute?” Ritchie interjects.

“No,” Eddie answers for them.

“Eddie said yes. He also said that he loves it when you scratch him behind the ears. It’s pretty much an orgasm for him. Look, watch.”

Ritchie, grinning, lunges it at him. 

“Don’t  **fucking** touch me.”

“He said, ‘Please fucking touch me.’”

The clubhouse is cramped, but there’s enough room for Eddie to narrowly dance away, swatting Ritchie away between curses all the while. He ducks behind Ben, who doesn’t appear to mind being used as a shield.

“You see,” Ritchie tries rounding Ben, but Eddie keeps the distance by side-stepping each of Ritchie’s advances. “Cats are known to be skittish when it comes to affection. What you really have to do is just—”

Ritchie fakes left and Eddie goes left — his left — to avoid him. Ritchie actually goes right, right into Eddie, with a huge overbearing koala hug.

“—Break them in.”

“Your face is touching my face,” Eddie says, aghast, and scrabbles to break free.

“He said, ‘meow.’”

“Do you have any idea how many fucking disease-spreading pathogens cover the surface of the human face, you dicknose?”

“He said, ‘meow, meow.’”

“Fuck you, Ritchie.”

“Aw, did you hear that? He said, ‘I love you!’”

With that, Eddie is able to shove away a laughing Ritchie. But Ritchie doesn’t mind. H’s too proud of himself. He could keep this up forever. Eddie’s ears could give him enough material to write a book. He could even write a routine about Eddie’s ears; he has the material for it.

“Too bad you didn’t hear what he said. You heard it, but you didn’t understand it, I mean. He speaks cat. Only I can translate it. Too bad. What a shame. You don’t know what you’re missing.”

“How’d you become so fluent in cat, Richie?” Bev says. She’s playing along. Unfortunately for Eddie, they all are.

“Eddie isn’t just any cat. He’s  _ my  _ cat. It’s a bond you just wouldn’t understand. I found him on the side of the road covered in fleas and I took him in out of the kindness of my big, thick, 12-inch… heart.” 

He cracks himself up all over again.

Meanwhile Eddie pats around the clubhouse until he finds his knit cap. Once it’s back in place, he gives a final ‘fuck you’ to Ritchie before making his exit. He’s had enough for one day.

He decides that he’d rather stay inside. 

Maybe he’s more of an indoor cat that way.


End file.
